


Ninja Artist

by GuileandGall



Series: Free To Be [28]
Category: Saints Row
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Mild Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 09:10:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8483656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuileandGall/pseuds/GuileandGall
Summary: Remy’s always drawn, from doodles in her notebooks in school to sketches of her father while they lie in wait for hours in the woods. Her drawing, like her reading is something she keeps just for herself. It is one of the few things that no one still living knows about her. A lot of what she draws is from memory or from her imagination, only rarely does she have an actual model, so to speak.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Totally enabled to write this by AntivanBrandy after that little imagine prompt ran around—you know the “Imagine your boss having a sketchbook with their drawings of their love interest” one. I noted that Remy is an artist, but she guards her sketchbooks like the Holy Grail. That conversation spawned another about her ninja artist tendencies.

 

**Ninja Artist**

**-1-**

The chorus of keys resounded off the metal surfaces. Neither of the other people in the room were talking, and both seemed entirely oblivious to the boss, who was tucked up in a dark corner of the room on a few crates of creatively reallocated Zin supplies. That thought reminded Remy that they needed to make another such run, once security died down a little. She had free time at the moment, so she quietly dug the notebook out of her pocket and one of half a dozen pencils she scavenged from the last heist.

The structure and guidelines came together easily. Even so she bit down on the side of her bottom lip firmly holding it there as her eyes moved, scanning Kinzie and Matt as they worked before returning to the paper to try and translate it. Kinzie’s brow furrowed over her bright eyes as the frames of her glasses slid down her nose, the lenses glowing brightly with the reflection of the screen. She seemed unaware of the strands of bright red hair dangling around her face and falling toward her eyes.

 _Matt’s is the same way_ , Remy thought as she glanced in his direction in time to see him flip it out of the way again with an exaggerated twist movement of his head. Remy grinned widely, amused that the lock of slick black hair fell right back where it had been. He did not repeat the motion again so it must not be in a spot that bothered him, or so she surmised as she turned back to her page.

 Not moments later, she was forced to tuck her diversion away, when Pierce came through the simulation room in his search of the ship for her. “Damn, Boss, there you are. What the hell is it with you and dark corners?”

“Element of surprise?” she replied in a sarcastic, you-should-know-the-answer-by-now sort of tone.

 

**-2-**

The boss almost always waited until the ship went silent to even think about pulling the small, black book out of the pocket on her thigh. Remy wanted to finish the sketch she started that morning, she still needed to finish Matt and that defiant lock that perpetually seemed to lay across his forehead and curl below his eye. Her smile was soft as the familiar features of his face seemed to take shape. She always took time with the eyes and though she knew that he had been looking at the computer screens when she started drawing this, as she finished his gaze upturned. His eyes still held an intensity, and even though it was the wrong intensity for the moment, Remy continued it as it was.

She drew his eyes looking up, right to where she had been sitting that morning, gazing at her with that warmth he seemed to save for her. Even if his countenance mismatched the situation she sketched him in, Remy preferred it that way. She enjoyed the soft inviting way he looked at her. His electric blue gaze drew her in with the honesty of that look. Letting her own gaze linger on her interpretation of that look, she wondered if he was still working upstairs. If so, Matt would likely be at it for more than twelve hours. _Surely, it wouldn’t be too much of a disturbance if she enlightened him to that fact and dragged him away from the console, right?_ Or so she asked herself.

The answer came easily and Remy stowed that one of the two notebooks that fit rather anonymously into the baggy pocket on her jumpsuit. Moving quickly and quietly through the ship, she did indeed hear that familiar stampede of the keyboard, though it could be Matt or Kinzie, or maybe both of them. When she reached the top of the stairs, however, she only saw him. The smile that spread across her lips was one that was fast becoming instinctual and involuntary. It took him a few moments to notice her as she leaned in the passageway.

When he did, she was not disappointed. It felt like déjà vu. Intense bright blue eyes darted upward and they changed slightly. His natural curiosity faded in favor of the warmth she had just been trying to capture on paper.

Remy made a display of looking at her watchless wrist. “You’ve been at this awhile.”

“I know,” he replied with a tired hint of a laugh that devolved into a yawn. He stretched in his chair. His arms bent back as well; the long, lithe fingers of his hands straightened and spread as he wiggled the stiffness out of them. “I was just trying to finish something up.”

“Can it wait or is it absolutely vital?” she asked as she crossed the room slowly. When she perched on the corner of his workstation, one of his hands smoothed down her leg from knee to ankle.

“Yes.” He smiled when he gave her that answer. It widened when she rolled her eyes. “It’s not quite vital, and it can wait. Why? Were you going to tuck me in?”

Feeling her lips curl into a smirk, the boss leaned toward him. “Something like that,” she whispered against his mouth.

 

**-3-**

The nightmares did not startle her anymore, even though her pulse raced like she actually had been chased. Remy managed to slither out of the bed she and Matt started sharing recently. Even if she was wide awake, he had only been asleep a few hours and it would not be fair to wake him just on the off chance that he might be able to put her to sleep again. After washing her face and draping a warm towel over the back of her neck she wandered through the spacious room again, only to grin with a silent bit of laughter.

He noticed she was gone, at least unconsciously. Matt had pulled her pillow there were she should be; his face nestled in the soft pillowcase. It made her wonder if maybe it smelled like her. She preferred that thought to the flash of the idea that he just needed something to cuddle at night. _Of course the pillow smells like me. I sleep on the damn thing every night,_ her mind countered.

Pulling open a drawer in her desk that she kept locked, she grabbed the book and found a pair of empty facing sheets. After tucking a pencil behind her ear and grabbing another one, Remy decided to be “unproductive” in her unanticipated wakefulness. She curled up on the floor against the wall, beside the dresser, leaning her shoulder against it as she just gawked at him for a moment. It still shocked her—not that they hooked up—but that he stuck it out, that he put up with all her crazy. The more she shared the more he seemed to care, it was the opposite of how most people reacted to her.

Matt did not judge her harshly. Actually, she thought, he did not judge her at all. He kept on telling her he just wanted to know her, to be with her; it took awhile but she believed him and she wanted those things, too.

Those thoughts swirled around her mind as she lost herself in the soft sounds of his breathing and the barest scratch of the pencil across the paper. The structure of the drawing came together in careful strokes—the hem of the sheets crossed over his hips, below the slope of his bare back, the angle of his arm, the almost anonymity of his partially buried and sleeping face. Her gaze lingered when it returned to him, the attention more akin to appreciation of her lover than simply to take in the scene to transmit the details.

Even so it came together. The sheets rippled and waved over his legs. The death grip of his hand on her pillow came to life in the puckers and creases of the fabric. Then she turned to the awkward angles of his sleep tousled hair, much of which swept over his ear and forehead. Like all of the sketches that came before, she dated this one according to the Zin dating system they used because it was easier. Then she scrawled her initials. R.E. M. in an economical script.

She sat there for a while, comparing them—Matt in the flesh and in pencil. Both were beautiful; though one was temporary, even more so the later it got. With a glance at the clock, Remy gave a little yawn. One which made her hopeful that she might be able to grab another hour of sleep, if luck allowed. After stowing her supplies and locking away her book, she crossed the room again. The boss climbed in on Matt’s side, slipping under the sheet, then carefully cuddled up against his back. When her arm circled his torso, he turned and wrapped her up in a sleepy embrace. Matt unconsciously buried his nose in her hair and draped a leg over her hip. Remy hummed a comfortable sigh and pressed a kiss against the center of his chest content to be completely engulfed by him.

 

**-4-**

“I told you, I am totally the anti-athlete,” Matt mumbled with only moderate coherence as he pinched his nose and looked at the ceiling.

“Well, at least it’s not broken.”

“I managed to just barely pass hand-to-hand. I’m really not that great with that whole coordinated bit.”

As he choked on a mixture of laughter and his own blood, Remy took a step toward him. She leaned her body against his, her hand pressing around his waist and up under his shirt along his spine. “You and I both know that’s not entirely true,” she lectured with a touch of heat, as she looked up at him.

Matt coughed one more time before he swallowed hard. His bright blue eyes were locked on hers in a look that suggested unspoken agreement. He shivered when her fingertips grazed back down his back.

“Put your head back,” she ordered again in that same tone.

He complied slowly, only finally looking away at the last second and with reluctance. “I thought this was something you weren’t supposed to do.”

“Eh.”

“Eh?” he said looking down at her again.

This time Remy grabbed his head and tilted it back up. “If you look up you’ll keep your hold tighter, which will stop the nosebleed. If you’re looking around, you will forget to hold tight. So, head up.”

“Yes, ma’am.” His tone held a sarcasm that earned him a poke to the ribs. The groan he gave in reply, made her chuckle.

“While I don’t agree that you’re the anti-athlete,” Remy acquiesced, “I will say that you do lack some coordination in a fight.”

“Thank you.”

Remy helped get Matt cleaned up, which lead to a demonstration of just how coordinated he could be given the right motivation. Then another. After, Matt leaned over her wearing that look she learned to recognize fairly easily. She smiled at him, wondering if he was going to ask or if she was going to have to drag it out of him.

Finally she went with the second option. “What?” His brow furrowed so she continued, “You’ve got that _I want to use my ask_ look.”

He collapsed onto his side next to her in warm laughter. “Am I that easy to read, love?”

“Matthew.” Remy stroked his face and kissed him gently. “You’re transparent.”

That left them cuddling, bodies shaking against one another, as their laughs rumbled together. His lips pressed to her forehead.

“So, what do you want to know?” Remy prompted.

She could tell Matt seemed to be wavering on the subject of what he wanted to ask. Even having the freedom to ask her anything, he still got a little nervous about it from time to time. “Would it be too soon to ask you to tell me something about you that no one else knows? Or maybe I should just ask you to tell me something I don’t know?”

They both knew the second question still had a very long list of items on it. She thought about it for a moment. Then just blurted it out. “I draw.”

Matt looked at her for a moment, expecting more information. “Guns from holsters? Or still-lifes? Still-lives?”

“Technically, both. But I meant the latter.”

“Really?” his brow furrowed.

“Don’t act so surprised. It’s not like I haven’t doodled on your forearm or anything before.”

He slipped his arm around her and pulled her back toward him. “How did I never notice that?”

“I’m a ninja artist,” she laughed playfully.

Matt smiled at her. “I guess you are.” He kissed her once turning a promising start into a peck that left her with a hint of a pout. “Would you show me?”

“Umm … Probably. Eventually. Just not right now.”

“Nothing I can do to convince you,” Matt purred at her, pressing his forehead against hers.

Remy blinked at him for a moment. “Keep being patient.”

“I can do that.” This time he did not pull away prematurely when he kissed her. This time he deepened the kiss as she expected, his hands grazing her skin in the most tempting of ways.

 

**-5-**

When the bedroom door slid open, the pair of them stumbled through the door in a tangle of limbs and half removed clothing. Somehow, Remy managed to yank his belt free while also getting her unbuttoned shirt the rest of the way off. She never was quite sure how the tiptoes and him slouching really made up for the more than a foot-and-a-quarter height difference, but somehow they made it work, even more so when the two of them hit a frenzy. Maybe it was a rush of lust, hormones, and adrenaline. Maybe it was just good, old Irish luck.

At that moment, it did not really matter. Matt jolted a little when the heel of his boot hit the edge of the bed. True to form, the boss pushed him back on the bed. This laugh was not his usual laugh, this one was deeper laced with the timbre he had when he whispered all the things he thought about doing to her in her ear at the most inappropriate times. Those delicate hands were anything but when he grabbed her hips and pulled her closer. She grabbed the back of his neck and pulled his mouth to hers. While she deepened the kiss, earning a needy groan, he returned the favor with her belt and started in on the buttons of her tac pants.

“Boots,” he grumbled between kisses, his hands only leaving her body because she was pushing his shirt off.

With an irritated grunt, Remy bit his bottom lip. “Yours, too.”

The boss took a step back and crouched to untie her boots, while Matt wrenched up his pant leg and dropped the zipper on his boot and yanked it off. He made a display of dropping said boot. “Don’t you worry about mine,” he shot back with a smug grin.

He had right to be. He was out of both of his boots and his socks by the time she got one off. Miller just perched there on the bed leaning back on his hands—watching Remy—legs outstretched and feet waving back and forth as if he had all the patience in the world. Once she got her other boot off, she stood and dropped it with as much ceremony as him.

“Bloody well took you long enough, love.”

There was no rhyme or reason to it. It was all in the way he looked at her right in that moment. The smart ass remark went unsaid, the vainglorious smirk on her face shifted and her face took on a countenance that was all tenderness. In a step, she had his face in her hands and this time when she kissed him it wasn’t about the frenzy and the need. He sensed it right off. Matt embraced her tightly, his palms and fingers pressing into the flesh and muscle of her back.

Breaking the kiss, Remy mumbled, “Ask me again.”

“What?”

When she pulled away, just enough to see his eyes, and said, “Ask again to see my drawings.”

 

**-6-**

It took a moment for him to realize what she meant. The quick shift combined with the vagueness left him mentally stumbling, which was rare for him. “Will you show me your sketchbooks?” he asked, wide-eyed and staring at her with surprise that she instigated it.

Matt could do nothing other than watch her. No one else, not even Johnny, knew about the drawing. Only him. Before she even reached the desk, his pulse raced even faster than it had been when they fell into the bedroom peeling each other’s clothes off. He felt a little dizzy. For months, she had refused to let him see her work, though every once and a while he would use his one ask to find out if she had drawn anything new. Sometimes she actually blushed when she answered the question and he never understood why.

Remy clutched them tight against her chest, like a young girl might protectively cradle her diary. She climbed into the middle of the bed and Matt followed, sitting across from her.

He had no words at the moment. He just watched and waited for her to offer him one. Remy opened a few, closing them quickly as she looked for the right one, or at least that was his interpretation of what she was doing. Then she held one out—a small pocket-sized yellow book that he thought looked familiar because of the eye symbol on the front. The symbol matched that tattoo on her shoulder; the one he still did not know the meaning of.

When she looked from the book back up to him, he took it and opened it. The first few images were just things: an orchid blossom, a table top set for a meal for one, a boot—no, not a boot it was one of her boots, the black ones with the purple fleur de lis inset in the toe, and someone’s keys a … Decker symbol key ring.

“These are my keys,” he said showing her the image.

“Yeah, I kind of picked your pocket one night in Prague after I got desperate for things to do. Waiting can be hard even when you know how to do it.”

Her laugh melted into his as he shook his head. “Tell me about it.” He grinned at the pages, turning them slowly. The detail and attention mesmerized him.

While he perused the first book, Remy picked up one of the larger sketchbooks and flipped through a few pages. Miller presumed she found what she was looking for because she held the open pages toward her, rather protectively.

“Remy, these are amazing. I don’t know why you kept this to yourself.”

She dipped her head a little, looking up at him incredulously. “I keep a lot of things to myself.”

“You’re right. This is just—“

“I’m glad you like it.” She handed him another book, larger than the last, all while still holding the other against her. “Look at this one next.”

The second book was full of people. Some he did not know, a few were obviously dead Zin. Then there were sketches of Oleg, Angel, and Josh. There were also ones of the entire crew, including him. He blushed at the picture of him standing in the common room watching Pierce and Shaundi play pool. The book was full of faces. Each time his own graced a page the blush returned or deepened.

“There’s a lot of me in there.”

Remy nodded, with a gentle, almost shy, smile. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“No,” Matt answered quickly. “I just …” He stared at her for a long moment. “I didn’t realize.”

Pulling the book away from herself a little, her eye lowered to the picture she held onto. “I told you. You mean a lot to me, Matt.”

Opening his mouth to speak, he stopped without making a sound when she turned the book and handed it to him. He stared at the picture. Him asleep, face buried in a pillow hugged against him.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she all but whispered. “I washed my face and when I came out I found you like that.”

His eyes shot up to hers.

“Drawing relaxes me.”

When she turned the page he pulled his eyes away from her and back to the pages as she turned them.  His breath hitched audibly when she got to the last one. It was from that afternoon. He did not remember her having the book, but he remembered waking up just like that, with his head in her lap and his arms wound around her leg.

“I—“ he stammered, staring at the book. Then he looked back up at her.

“I do some of them from memory.” Her tone suggested she was trying to excuse it.

Matt had no idea what to say, so he leaned over the pile of books and pulled her toward him, kissing her. “You’re very talented. And I’m very lucky.”

Remy pulled away just enough to meet his gaze. “I love you, Matt.”

He pulled her lips back to his again. Patience. That stupid saying was right. Patience was a virtue. And good things did come to those who wait. Matt laughed into her mouth when he thought of that stupid ketchup commercial that used that line. He clung to that moment—the sound of those words, the warmth of her hands, the softness of her lips——until he wanted more. With tender pecks, he pulled himself away eventually. “I love you, too, Remy.”

“We can look at the rest later,” she suggested with a warm smile.

“I’d like that. And maybe next time you want to draw me I could be awake for it,” he added helping her gather and move the books to the nightstand.

“I don’t know.” Remy crawled back toward him, her finger catching in the neck of his black t-shirt. “You have to be awfully still.”

“I might could manage it. With the right incentive.”

“We’ll just have to see, won’t we?” Her fingers threaded through his hair as her lips met his again.


End file.
